Affiliate Marketing: Make $$ on your own Website!

By Gloria Cohen
Posted Sunday, November 14, 2004

So, how can you make affiliate marketing successful for you? With the proliferation of goods and services on available on the Internet, advertisers and web site owners galore are looking to individuals, companies and other website owners to help sell their products utilizing the power of other sites and companies to spread the word. It’s another great form of marketing medium and here’s the best part, to have the ability to make extra funds on the side. Many businesses are jumping in on the affiliate wagon to generate additional revenue in addition to their online niche. What’s even more interesting about affiliate marketing is that many people are in the affiliate marketing business without actually having a product or service to sell!

Affiliate marketing can be in a number of forms such as banner advertising on affiliate sites, text links, and reviews written by affiliates, direct email and so forth. The advertisers compensate webmasters by paying them for displaying the ads, or for click throughs sent to them, or (as is most common these days) a commission on the sales resulting as a referral from their web site or email message.

Many website owners and businesses are swapping ads in place of paying upfront for advertising on the other site. The only time money actually changes hands, is when you pay out a percentage for each time your link is clicked on, and the other website owner pays you for when his links get hit on from your site. One hand washes the other when it comes to affiliate marketing. The tricky part here is which program do you participate in. There are thousands of programs out there, all claiming to be ‘number one.’ Being a successful affiliate will require a bit of work. With the nature of the web and hundreds of new websites going live each day, the competition becomes much more fierce, which means you will definitely have your work cut out for you. Understanding how affiliate marketing works and how much time will be required on your part would be a good place to start before you make any decisions before venturing out starting an affiliate business.

The question remains.

How do I make money and how do I use my website space to accommodate for affiliate marketing?

These are the two most important questions when it comes to affiliate marketing. First things first. You must have your own website, with your real domain hosted on a real web server with real features. Don’t get any of those freebie sites please! Those sites will lose you money. If you’re serious about having an affiliate program, then you must spend a little bit of money to get your own domain name that contains preferably your own keywords and/or keyword phrases. Don’t forget the hosting company. Having a good hosting company is crucial to the success of your affiliate program. ( You can refer to one of eMA previous articles. "Web Hosting: Selecting the Right Host!" or go to WebHostingRebates). By having your own domain name, and your own affiliate website will guarantee you more traffic than a self-replicating website. Look legit and be legitimate.

The second important thing about affiliate marketing is how to utilize your website space for your affiliate program. The hottest things out on the affiliate market right now are in the form of text link ads. Text link ads are bandwidth friendly, don’t require much space and can be implemented in most page layouts. The shorter the text links, the better the display in terms of stating your product or company name. By linking, the user can find further information of related articles and reviews about this particular link. Another way to generate money with affiliate marketing on your web site is to offer simple banner ads.
The key with banner ads is to go simple and choose the right one. With the large variety of banner ads out there, it can be a bit overwhelming when it comes to the decision process. Banners should load quickly and should not appear in the form of ‘Spam’. You won’t get linked if it takes too long to download, or if it appears to be a ‘junk’ banner. Do your research when it comes to banner ads for affiliate marketing. These are just a few forms of affiliate advertising you can use on your website. One more important factor is how easily it is to implement links or ads on your site, how quickly it can be set up and go live. Technical expertise will be required for work in this area.

There are many other forms of affiliate marketing programs you can take advantage of. Just hop online and begin your journey. Successful affiliate marketing will require a lot of patience. The major blunder that many people do when they start out with affiliate marketing is that they don’t sit on it for a while to see it turn over. What they do is bop from one affiliate program to the next because they become so discouraged with the outcome in a very short period. Things will only go upward by being patient and allow it the chance to prosper. Like I always say-“Good things come to those who wait.”

About the Author:
Gloria Cohen has a strong background in Internet marketing in helping businesses find new customers by using effective marketing strategies. Gloria is currently an editor of eMarketing Answers.

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